“You didn’t break it. It was unworkable from the start. Think about it: you’re as fucked-up as I am, and so is your family. Our family. How was anything good ever going to come from that?”
“You don’t think we had anything good?”
Gus unlocked the rustic front door to the cottage. He kicked it open, leaving a boot mark in the peeling paint. “I think we could’ve done, if we were different people living different lives, but we’re not, so what’s the point?”
He let the door swing shut in my face. It locked itself, leaving me trapped outside, and the irony was fucking biblical.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gus
We worked on the cottage all week. For the first few days, Billy hovered close by, perhaps waiting for me to come to my senses, or maybe because he knew I felt like throwing myself off the edge, and he wanted to catch me.
But by the third day, he’d given up waiting for me to break. He kept his back to me, worked like a demon, and smoked an entire pack of cigarettes. I felt the loss of his watchful gaze as much as I mourned his absence from my bed. Billy was a lifestyle I’d come to rely on. He was strong and brave and funny and kind. There was no one else I wanted to spend my days with.
Even like this, I felt lucky.
But still, by the end of the week, despite the nice weather, I was relieved when the job drew me off the roof and into the dusty attic of the cottage. Away from Billy, I could breathe. For a little while, at least, until the nerves in my skull began to protest at overuse, and the headache I’d wrestled with all week came back full force.
Irritated, I perched in the loft hatch and rubbed my eyes. I felt knackered and hungover, which was annoying, as I’d resisted the urge to drink my angst away every night in favour of going to bed early. Some nights I’d even managed to fall asleep, though not without a sustained period of being hyperaware of Billy’s every movement around the house, and right now it was hard to recall a time when my life hadn’t revolved around him. How I’d ever shared a bed with anyone else or done simple things like shopping or eating without thinking about him.
He was still thinking about me. Every morning he bought me breakfast and left it on the van seat between us. I think it made him laugh that I couldn’t resist eating whatever he produced, even if I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, but the joke had been on him this morning. My sausage bap was still where he’d left it. For some reason I wasn’t hungry. In fact, the mere thought of food made my stomach twist, and that distressed me more than just about anything.
Except the fact that I’d committed myself to never sleeping with Billy again. That was off the scale. I’d never get over it. And perhaps that was why my body was rebelling. A biological protest.
“Are you done up there?”
I stopped rubbing my eyes and blinked down at Billy. He was standing at the top of the stairs, face a study in the apathy he’d adopted when he wasn’t buying me breakfast. “What?”
“Are you done? It’s five o’clock.”
How the hell was it five o’clock? The last time I’d checked my phone it had been barely lunchtime. I glanced into the attic and at the roof beams I still needed to adjust. One was obstructed by the ancient boiler the gas men were ripping out next week. The plan had been to wait for them, but Billy had worked faster on the exterior than I’d anticipated. If I finished the beams we wouldn’t have to come back on Monday.
Wrapping the job up seemed like a closure we both desperately needed. “I’m going to finish the beams. You go if you want.”
“You’re not coming?”
“No.”
I started to climb back into the attic, but a wave of dizziness hit me. The boards I’d laid out in the loft tilted, and white spots danced in front of my eyes. I still wasn’t hungry, but skipping breakfast was starting to feel like the worst idea I’d ever had.
Second only to destroying my friendship with Billy.
I sat back down.
He was still glowering at me hard enough to make my churning stomach turn over again. I forced myself to meet his stormy gaze. “What?”
“Are you okay?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
“Because you’re being a weirdo.”
“What else is new?”
“I mean even more than usual.”
“It’s not weird to want to get this job done so we can move on next week. I don’t know about you, but I could do without hoofing it out here every morning when we’ve got jobs stacked up in Rushmere.”
Billy’s eyebrow ticked up, but his expression remained otherwise impassive until he let loose a world-weary sigh. “I’m gonna get the bus. Have fun wanking over your beams or whatever it is you’re really doing up there.”
“Okay.”
“You’re really not coming?”
“No. I told you. I want to finish this.”
“Then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you going to come home?”
“Where else would I go?”
Malevolence sharpened Billy’s gaze. “Is that a real question?” But his expression melted the moment the words left his soft lips. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Cos we seem to have lost track of each other, and I don’t mean the freaky stuff we did in your bed.”
If what I felt for Billy was as simple as wanting to fuck him again, maybe the ache in my chest wouldn’t have been there. Perhaps I’d have been able to breathe when I looked at him,
